Croatia Offensive Expands War In Balkans

By Greg Rosenberg, Militant, Vol.59 no.19, 15 May 1995

War flared anew in the Balkans with the expansion of large-scale
fighting into Croatia on May 1. The regime of Croatian president
Franjo Tudjman unleashed 3,000 of its troops, backed by warplanes,
tanks, and heavy artillery against forces commanded by rightist Serb
leader Milan Martic in the Western Slavonia region of Croatia. In
response, Martic's troops, allied with the Serbian regime in
Belgrade, began shelling the Croatian capital of Zagreb, a city of 1
million people, with cluster bombs. The bombardment killed 5 and
wounded 121 on the first day of shelling May 2.

These events shattered the permanent cease-fire reached between
Zagreb and forces allied with Belgrade in March 1994. The 1991 war in
Croatia left the rightist bands linked to Serbia in control of nearly
one-third of Croatia. Ever since, Tudjman has agitated for retaking
the territory.

The fighting in Croatia threatens to widen the five-year-old war
throughout the area that was once Yugoslavia. It began only hours
after the expiration of a four-month cease-fire between the Bosnian
government of Alija Izetbegovic and rightist forces in Bosnia headed
by Radovan Karadzic. Diplomatic coercion by the imperialist powers
failed to get an extension of the cease-fire, which was punctuated
throughout by numerous shellings and battles.

With the shattering of the Stalinist apparatus represented by the
League of Communists in the former Yugoslavia in 1990, rival gangs of
would-be capitalists draped themselves in nationalist flags and
launched a series of wars and massacres to grab more land and riches
for themselves. In Bosnia alone, some 200,000 people have been left
dead or missing. Millions of working people were forced to flee their
homes, either to other parts of the former Yugoslavia or to elsewhere
in Europe.

‘Go all the way this time’

Tudjman announced the offensive was only a limited policing
action, but Croatian radio aired patriotic songs and messages
urging the army to go all the way this time.

Croatian troops rolled up the Zagreb-Belgrade highway, seizing control
of the road and other points in Western Slavonia. A Serb commander
agreed May 2 to surrender to the Croatian army and hand over weapons
to troops deployed under the United Nations flag, and forces
controlling the town of Okucani agreed to surrender to UN troops.

Tudjman declared victory on the second day of the offensive, stating
that The action of the Croatian police and army is closed. Few,
however, subscribe to that view, noting that Zagreb's attack will
have wider ramifications.

Tudjman added that all Croatian citizens of Serbian descent
would be guaranteed respect of their human and civil rights.
But thousands began fleeing southwards into Bosnia to escape advancing
Croatian troops. In 1993, the Croatian army carried out its own
massacres of Serbs near the Adriatic coast.

Earlier this year, the Croatian government had threatened to order the
expulsion of all troops in Croatia under the UN flag. Zagreb came
under heavy pressure from Washington, Paris, and Bonn to prevent this.

At a meeting with U.S. vice president Al Gore in Copenhagen, Denmark,
March 12, Tudjman agreed to allow 8,500 of the 12,000 so-called
peacekeepers to stay, provided their deployment would make it harder
for the bands linked with Belgrade to receive arms from Serbia and
parts of Bosnia. Gore hailed the announcement as a major step away
from war and towards peace.

Zagreb's offensive leaves it in control of one of the four
enclaves taken by forces loyal to Belgrade during the 1991
war. The bands led by Martic are allied with those of Karadzic in
neighboring Bosnia. These groups were originally organized and
supplied by the Serbian regime, after efforts to use the Yugoslav army
to block their rivals in different republics from breaking away failed
in 1991. The goal of these forces was, and still is, to absorb areas
in Croatia and Bosnia where populations of Serbian origin predominate,
into a Greater Serbia.

Karadzic is threatening retaliation for the offensive. In anticipation
of this, Croatian warplanes rocketed the sole bridge connecting
Western Slavonia to territory controlled by Karadzic's forces in
Bosnia May 1.

Fighting mushrooms in Bosnia

With the expiration of the Bosnian cease-fire, fighting has mushroomed
there as well. UN officials reported more than 2,600 explosions at the
front lines on May 2 alone. Repeated efforts by the governments of the
United States, France, Britain, Germany, and Russia—known as the
Contact Group—to force a settlement have failed. The Bosnian
government rejected an indefinite extension of the cease-fire, saying
this would consolidate Karadzic's claims on the 70 percent of
Bosnian territory his forces control. The Bosnian government continues
to make efforts to break the siege of Sarajevo, which still faces
attacks from rightist snipers.

Confronting the threat of a war engulfing the Balkans and spilling
into other parts of Europe, Paris, London, and Moscow have recently
said they may withdraw troops deployed in Bosnia under the UN flag.

Paris, which has 4,200 troops in Bosnia, is under increased pressure
to show results. Thirty-six French soldiers have been killed in
Bosnia, two of them during the run-up to the first round in the French
presidential elections.

An April 12 editorial in the London Financial Times, advancing a
familiar theme in the big-business press, complained of, the lack
of leadership from which NATO is now suffering, in regard to
Bosnia.

The apparent inaction of the NATO powers, however, has little to do
with their leadership capacity. As the war widens throughout Bosnia
and Croatia, the conflicting interests of the imperialist powers, as
well as Moscow, come to the fore. Each is maneuvering to gain
economic, political, and strategic military advantages over its rivals
in the Yugoslav war.

Moscow, for example, continues to fight the efforts by the other
Contact Group members to maintain the embargo against the Serbian
regime, its ally in the region. In April, Russian general Alexander
Perelyakin was expelled from his position as UN commander of two
battalions in Croatia. UN officials accused the general of allowing
soldiers, weapons, and fuel to flow from Serbia into Serb-occupied
Krajina.

While the Serbian regime has been the most aggressive in promoting the
war, none of the gangs running any of the former Yugoslav republics
speaks for the interests of working people. Ideology has been
dispensed with in favor of money, noted an article in the May 8
New Yorker magazine. Small oligarchies masquerading as popular
tribunes are busy stuffing their pockets—placing their relatives
in diplomatic sinecures abroad, or creating private armies for a final
showdown.